Senior British army figures claimed on Monday they had more evidence to suggest that pictures showing troops ”torturing” an Iraqi prisoner were a hoax.
The row over the veracity or otherwise of the images showed no sign of diminishing as MPs called on Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, to make a statement on Monday in the Commons.
In Cyprus, where the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment is based, members were said to be furious at the apparent besmirching of their reputation.
The Royal Military Police is carrying out a three-pronged inquiry into the pictures published by the Daily Mirror. It is investigating in Iraq, the UK and Cyprus, a spokesperson said.
There have been claims that the photographs were taken by MoD investigators reconstructing allegations of abuse.
The spokesperson said: ”The authenticity of the pictures will form part of the RMP investigation and until such a time as the investigation concludes it would be inappropriate for us to pass comment on their authenticity.”
A source close to the regiment said there was already evidence to dispute the Daily Mirror’s claim that the images were authentic and had been passed to it by two serving soldiers.
The Guardian was told that a soldier pictured in the Mirror on Monday with his face obscured and identified as one of the informants had come forward to deny speaking to the newspaper.
”There is growing anger,” the source said. ”They are the greatest recruitment photos that al-Qaeda could possibly have wished. The CO is rooting through the regiment high and low to find who has any knowledge.”
But the Mirror remained adamant that the pictures were genuine and that the mistreatment had been carried out by a rogue element in the regiment.
It said the soldiers stood by their claim that the prisoner had been given an eight-hour beating and urinated on before being thrown out of a lorry. A statement said: ”Although we appreciate the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment has concerns, as they put it, about the Daily Mirror, we also have very serious concerns about the behaviour of some of their troops in Iraq.”
Even if the photos turn out to be fake, defence sources said it did not mean the allegations were untrue, pointing out that the unit was already being investigated. ”We welcome the inquiry; we want to get to the bottom of this,” a source said.
A total of 18 photos are being examined by the special investigation branch in London, and in Iraq officials are trawling through prisoner records from last August to check if any complaints match the allegations made in the Mirror, according to a British spokesperson in Cyprus. Soldiers from the regiment were soon to be interviewed by military police.
Paul Keetch, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson, will table an urgent question on Tuesday morning calling on Hoon to report progress made in the military police’s inquiry.
Colonel David Black, a former commander of the regiment, said on Monday the pictures had probably not even been taken in Iraq.
One inconsistency was that the lorry pictured was a Bedford MK. ”The MK … was not deployed by the army to Iraq at all. That vehicle can’t operate with the fuel that was available in Iraq.”
The Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, warned that, true or false, the images would have a massive impact within Iraq and across the Arab world. – Guardian Unlimited Â